


the river takes me

by CkyKing



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, Gods & Goddesses, Immortality, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-02 07:25:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10939767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CkyKing/pseuds/CkyKing
Summary: the stories of gods and goddesses are messy things. the river, the ice, and a son meant for neither.





	1. the river takes me

**Author's Note:**

> okay, this ran away from me and ended up...whatever this is. originally posted on [tumblr](http://ckyking.tumblr.com/post/160814484694/the-river-takes-me). sooo, enjoy? i guess?

Your mother, your beautiful mother who had such life in her until she was dragged from the river she called home. It still whispers to you how she fought against her captors, dragging men and women down into its depths, voice a howling wind that is whispered about in Insomnia ever now.

But your father. Your icy, heartless father, born from winter’s coldest night.

He froze it solid, the now nameless river, languishing for its stolen heart. You will never know why he wanted your mother, or why he sacrificed so many to capture her. You only know what the last piece of your family tells you, through steam to cloud to rain, calling you, begging you to come back, away from the city of light and metal you grew up in.

***

Maybe he loves you in his own way, your cold father. There was a time when you were young and weak, too much like your mother to survive the pain of Insomnia. It’s a hazy memory now, lost in waves, but you know you did not see him for a month. Instead, you were cared for by servants, frightened things too afraid to displease their ruler to stay more than the bare minimum with you.

It is not a fond memory.

Only at night did you know he was there, his touch the closest thing you would ever get to comfort.

But, but, little by little, you started getting better, your breaths coming easier, your steps a little bigger as ice and stone and fire loosened their grip on your weary heart.

You were never made for such things.

Later, when you were finally allowed out of your rooms, was when you understood. The river, _her_ river, was now a silver arrow piercing straight through the Wall and into the city’s heart, lapping at the Citadel’s steps in welcome, in joy. Even the pain of being shifted from its course was a worthy price to see you again, its daughter’s son.

You only learned later, through gossips and whispers in the shell of your ears, that your father carved the earth with his own hands ( _Ah_ , you thought then, _this was why his hand was so warm_ ), silenced his subjects’ protests and tamed the river just so he could lay it at your feet in offering, his gift to the only son he would ever get.

Perhaps it is love. Perhaps it is greed. Your tired heart longs for the answer, but you learned a long time ago that wishing was useless.

***

You are older now, a man grown, and your father can no longer keep you. You do not look back as you step into the river, your mother’s robes draped across your figure and trailing down the steps you know better than anything else by now.

It is an unspoken promise between the two of you that the river will always take you back to this, if you want it to, that Insomnia’s heart will always be yours to claim.

He knows that you never will, but still, he hopes. _Perhaps this is his love,_ you think faintly as the river takes you, _waiting and waiting, letting you go so you may come back._

You asked yourself many times if he loved you, if he loved your mother. But never have you asked yourself if you loved him. How strange.

Maybe you do love him, in your own way, the only thing you could call yours in a world that rejected you. The thought is bittersweet on your tongue, because your father wanted you. Oh, how he wanted you, the river whispers in your ears. It was never your mother he wanted; it has always been you.

But it is late, and you are tired, and you close your eyes as you drift away, melt and shift until you are nothing but water.

Nothing but water.

***

Away from Insomnia is not better, you find out. Perhaps you were not loved, perhaps you were rejected, but always were you protected.

Your heart is a treasure, and many are eager to lay claim to it. But your father taught you cruelty at his feet, taught you ruthlessness, and you cut them down one by one. It is customary to gift their bodies to the river you now call your own, but you refuse to taint it with such depraved dreams.

Ice shatters in your fingers as you let go, your father’s blood lulled back to sleep once more by the songs held in your veins. It still hurt as much as before to wield his power, but you learned. Your face is as impassive as ever, your mother’s features thrown into sharp relief by the red coating it.

You were never meant for cruelty, but you are a good student.

 _Keep your heart safe, my son_ , you can still hear him say in the voice of mighty glaciers crashing against one another, _immortality makes monsters out of the best of us._

None of you pointed out the lie for what it was. All of you were already monsters, and you both knew that better than anyone.

Ice turns to water, washes you away.

***

You do not know why you go back, but you do. You always do.

A tiny part of your quicksilver heart, always changing, always moving, is cold and terrible, and your father is the only one who can touch it.

Was it his doing, or yours? You don’t know. But you do know that just as it longs for ice, a tiny part of your father’s heart melts, calls for you.

Once a year, on the day you left for the first time, you go back to Insomnia, ignore the Wall tearing at your fragile body until you reach the Citadel once again. Your father always waits for you there, on the last step, power contained so you will not freeze when he inevitably takes your hand in his.

It is the same every year, and you let him have this, your hand in his, the illusion that you will never leave.

You stay like this until you are back in the gardens, near the fountains and ponds he created just for your mother, and later for you. Without you there to tend to them, the flowers are smaller, shyer, but they lean just as eagerly into you when you brush against them in welcome.

You are blue and gold in a garden of red and purple, the colours your mother favoured, and the ones you learned to hate.

Just as always, he sits on a bench a little distance away, sword carefully laid across his lap as he watches you. A hint of fondness blooms in your chest at the sight, your cold father who loved you enough to tarnish his city with water, to look after you even as his subjects loathed and lusted after you in turns.

Flowers twine themselves around your hands, blood red, and you let them feed from you, like you always did when you were younger; nothing but water.

Your cold father is crowned in red, and you sink to your knees before him. In Insomnia, you are but a pretty thing, and you play it well.

Your sleeves bright white on his knees, your head tilted up to look at him. What does he see, you wonder. Your mother, or you?

In the end, it matters not. At your touch, his sword disappears in fragments of ice, and he lets it go, just like he always does. You are his favourite after all.

With this final thought, you lay your head down in his lap, close the green eyes he gifted you, and you sleep.

The river, the ice, you were born from both, but meant for neither.

So you sleep, and sleep, and sleep, a king turned guard for a day, a river empty for a night.

You do not wish to wake up, but you do anyway. You always do.


	2. the river sings deep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> love is both a heavy burden and the most important thing in the world. noctis learns, and keeps learning its many forms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [more](http://ckyking.tumblr.com/post/161062147074/the-river-sings-deep) from river/ice god noctis~ our favourite savage is making his appearance in the next installment!

He loves you so much, your father. It took you years and years, decades even, to realize how much he did.

A Lucis’ love is a terrible thing, and you are both humbled and awed by its depth, to be the sole recipient of it.

You know it hurts him deeply each time you leave, but even for him, you cannot stay. You can be pretty and tame, for him, but no more than for a day.

He can pretend that Insomnia does not slowly kill you, that you could stay with him forever, safe in his arms. You love him enough for this, you think.

But oh, looking back, you were such a suspicious thing, tiny heart already bruised by the loss of your mother, who gave her life to sustain yours. Unloved, unwanted, or so you thought.

Your love, just like water, shifts and changes, river to steam to rain. Every single drop of your blood is saturated in your mother’s love, which sings deep in your veins. The very air around you hums with the river’s love, little sacrifices so it may always be with you.

You couldn’t understand something as static as ice, and you still cannot in some ways. Still, your father’s hand in your hair, his frozen green eyes looking into yours, the care with which he taught you deadliness. You now know what it means, and your heart rests easier.

You crack, he melts, you meet in the middle.

Your father, who went to war with a goddess to steal her heart, like his father did before him. A gift to his son, born weak and mortal, who would have died if not for it. A gift to his son, who became winter-made-flesh.

Family is the most precious thing to a Lucis.

Your father, who saw you, reflected in the river’s waters, when you were but a thought, an idea. Your father, who loved you even then, who tamed a goddess so you may be born.

You were not born human, unlike the Lucis who came before you, but you were his all the same.

***

In the gardens he made in your name, that he keeps safe when he cannot do the same to you, you sleep, and you sleep. It is the closest you can be to each other, and you hope to take it with you, always.

For him, you wear white, you are snow and foam, a gentle dream that may fade away at the slightest touch. It is there that you are at your kindest, and most dangerous.

Your father, who loves you so much. Your father, who brings you closer and whispers secrets in tones that would kill lesser beings. But you are your mother’s son, and you endure. You accept from him what you would kill anyone else for. This is your love.

A king’s heart is a heavy weight to carry, but, but. You love him best, your father.

River, to steam, to snow.

***

But the thing is, the thing is, you fall in love. Your driftwood heart, your tired heart which you had thought dead for centuries starts to beat anew, slowly, steadily. Unnoticed.

It begins deep in the forest, in the place where your river becomes lake for a while. This is where you feel the safest, outside of your father’s arms, where only what humans call monsters and who you call friends dwell.

So far from anyone, you let your divinity fall away, let the glow fade from your skin, let the half-heard words that sing in your wake sink.

There is no one to warn away, no one to cow. No one to kill.

There is just you, and the river, and the ones who wish to keep you company.

This time, it is a dragon, a shy thing you sheltered in your depths when its family died by hunters’ hands. Once frail, it is now coils and coils of muscles and scales, guarding this place where your power dwells before coming back to you. Its head, huge compared to your mortal form, is warm under your hands as you pet it with careful motions, mindful of the raised scars crisscrossing its hide. A survivor, just like you.

You will not understand, not for years, why you did not feel his presence then. A human is a void to your senses, an empty vessel waiting to be filled, so unlike the thriving nature all around them.

Their bodies, born so long ago from the sea, still remember the lull and pull of the waves, swimming against the current to survive. They may have thrived, humans, but their bodies belong to you, called to water, repelled by it. Such contradictions, such life.

But they are empty to you, their souls like ghosts, barely felt and always unseen. See-through, greedy, short-lived. You never concerned yourself with death, and you do not intend to start now.

Your father, your mother, you, born from the two of them; you will never experience it, not truly. Ice, to river, to steam, to snow, flowing and flowing in a never-ending cycle, chasing desperately after one another.

But it is neither here nor there. Death will come for you, one day, but it is not your time yet.

The leaves crackling under decidedly human feet are what bring him to your attention, head lazily turning around to face the opposite bank as all the translucent frills, until now tame under your fingers, flare up in alarm.

You hush your friend down wordlessly, humming a few ringing notes until he settles down again, golden scales wrapping protectively around your body, a sharp contrast to the muted green and white of your robes. Your voice is the only thing you cannot hide, even at close to mortal as you make yourself appear.

Startled blue eyes meet yours, and the world holds its breath.


End file.
